Blue and Red
by DevDev
Summary: Sawyer can't count how many times Claire tries to kill herself after Aaron is gone. First story of my 'Can't Love, Can't Hurt' series


_Sky black and blue_

_Blue turned to red_

_It's quiet in the streets now_

_It's screaming in your head_

* * *

She dreams. She dreams of blue.

Explosions, baby blankets and baby cries, jungles, and trees, and the ocean. Suffocating, a chopping helicopter, screams and screams and screams. Baby blue eyes gazing at her promising, promising, promising so much and giving so little. Taking **so** much. Her baby is crying, but she can't find him. Why can't she find him?

When she wakes up screaming, no one is there. She gasps and sputters and clutches at her **blue** blanket and **blue** bed. Grabs at anything in sight to rid of the blue, rid of it and make it go away and never come back again. Scissors in her sight, scissors in her hand, scissors into her blanket, scissors into her skin. She stops screaming when the blanket is red. Stops screaming when the bed is red. Stops screaming when her hands are slashed with red.

Sawyer finds her in a pool of her own blood, her breath still coming in gasps. He asks her what happened, but he's so blue that she can't even see him.

Once upon a time, her baby blue boy quieted upon hearing Sawyer's voice. Once upon a time, she might have too.

.

Claire's eyes are always red now. As red as the slashes on her thin wrists. As red as the marks around her neck. As red as her fingernails, his and her blood mingling underneath.

Her arms are covered in blue bruises, made by him. It's not his fault she tries to drown herself or tries to slash her wrists into red ribbons. It's not his fault she's screamed herself hoarse and it's not his fault she's tried to wrap noose after noose around her neck. The bruises are there because of all the times he's had to stop her so far. She's wasting away and all he can do is take away the scissors and shred noose after noose to keep her alive.

Sometimes he's not so sure why he does it.

Aaron is gone. Flown somewhere over the blue horizon and they all know he's never coming back. None of them are coming back and he doesn't blame them… except maybe he actually does.

If he watches her any longer, he'll walk into the blue ocean with her.

.

Red and blue. Red and blue. Red and blue.

The ocean is blue, but now it's red too. She can't help the blood that drip drip drips into the blueness and she doesn't want to. Wants. She wants to open her mouth and swallow all the blue water and walk to her baby. Her baby. Her baby is gone and gone and gone and never coming back. Never is forever and she doesn't know how to live here forever without him.

Aaron's forgotten blanket is blue, but now it's red too. Everything blue around them suddenly turns red and she doesn't know why. Her tears are red too. Her eyes bleed with pain and there's nothing she can do. She **claws** anything in her reach, but most of the time, she's not touching anything at all. Nothing except her own skin.

.

When she fucks Desmond, he calls out for Penny. She doesn't know Penny but knows she's beautiful and not broken like she is. Not a waste of life. She doesn't say anything at all, makes hardly any noise. She knows Sawyer can't stop her from slowly dying this way. Knows he wouldn't dare try.

Desmond's mouth to mouth isn't helping her breathe like before; it's killing her this time.

.

Sawyer asks her why she won't let him save her. She asks him what he's saving her for. He doesn't answer.

She kisses him goodnight. Whispers her goodbyes to the sun.

.

The first time Sawyer really touches her, she's bleeding again. He rips the scissors from her bloody fingers and asks where she got them this time. She doesn't respond, but touches his face and she's crying red all over again. She whimpers like a wounded dog and curls her fingers ever so slightly around his chin. He chucks the scissors somewhere into the distance and grabs her arms, crushing her to him, bruising her once more.

She doesn't feel it.

They stare at each other for a long time before he turns red. And then there's no stopping them. When she's naked, he touches her in places she hasn't been touched in what seems like forever. She folds herself onto him, into him, with him.

He turns her blue.

.

When Claire's eyes turn blue again, when Sawyer doesn't need to hide every pair of scissors, when the marks on her neck fade away. After she's stopped her trysts with Desmond. When she starts to live her life again.

She's pregnant.

A death sentence on the island. One she's tried so hard to be served with, but not now.

Not when she's finally blue again. Not when she's falling in love. Please, God, not now.

.

She tells him he can't save her. Tells him that it was a waste all along and that he should have left her in the jungle to die. She would have preferred it then.

When he speaks it's only a whisper. He tells her that she was the one who saved him.

.

She dies with a burst of red. With no doctors to try and save her, the blue turns red and suddenly she's flying flying flying up into the air and into the blue and away. Her new baby boy looks just like his daddy, and flies like him too.

.

Sawyer buries her and Desmond's baby far away from the blue ocean. An hour after, he swallows a bullet and Desmond buries him.

* * *

_We're damned at the end _

_We're damned at the start _

_Blame it on the roses _

_Blame it on the red _

End.


End file.
